This week's top gardening tasks, from sowing basil to pinching out annuals

Almost all flowering annuals (e.g. zinnias, antirrhinums, cleomes, cosmos and sunflowers, as well as pot plants such as fuchsias) need pinching out. Remove the tip of main flowering shoots to encourage them to bush out. If tips are small and soft, use your finger and thumb. If a bit larger, use scissors or secateurs. It will delay flowering by a week or so, but gives you a bigger, stronger plant in the end.

2 Take softwood cuttings

After pinching out tender shrubby plants such as fuchsia, use the tips as softwood cuttings. Put tips into a plastic bag to minimise water loss. Strip off bottom leaves and pinch out tip to reduce water loss. Then poke each one into a gritty mix of moist compost in a small pot, three or four cuttings around the edge. Find a cool but well lit spot, and keep the pot well watered. Cuttings should root in three or four weeks.

Sown by the end of June, these will put on sufficient growth before winter to flower next year. Iceland poppies and sweet williams do better sown into a tray inside and later pricked out before going into the garden. Sow wallflowers, foxgloves and sweet rocket direct into a seedbed, spacing seed 2in (5cm) apart.

Full of beans: a frame will help French or runner beans grow better (ALAMY)

If you’ve planted runner or climbing French beans, create a frame, the bigger the better for impact and growth. To make a tepee, sink eight or 12 hazel uprights, or bamboo canes (ideally 10ft/300cm tall), into the ground 10-12in (25-30cm) deep, and bind at top with Flexi-Tie. Add horizontal willow or string in two or three blocks for strength, winding in and out of the posts. This should withstand early autumn gales.

Use runners – long stems sent out by strawberry plants – to propagate new plants. Peg down the runner and new plantlets and roots will soon form. In a few weeks the satellite plants can be cut from the parent and potted up, or moved to a new home.

6 Mow the lawn weekly

Tip-top condition: give your lawn a weekly mow (ALAMY)

Use long-handled shears to cut lawn edges for a tidy look. If your lawn needs a pick me up, feed with a fast-acting liquid fertiliser.

Geraniums such as G. psilostemon and 'Johnson’s Blue’, have finished flowering and their foliage may look messy. Cut back to ground. Feed (try poultry manure pellets), mulch and water well. New foliage will grow.

8 Direct sow basil

Seeds of success: sow your basil in a sheltered spot that gets plenty of sun (ALAMY)

Direct sow a pack of basil in a sheltered sunny spot into fine consistency soil, spacing seeds about 2½in (6cm) apart. Water in well then thin to 1ft (30cm) when seedlings reach 1-1½in (3-4cm). Water twice a week, in morning, not at night. Once plants have reached about 8in (20cm), harvest by removing top of a stem, cutting to just above a pair of leaves. Stems quickly regrow, so harvest repeatedly.

We’re trying a new system this year: three cuttings of one variety go into 5L pots of rich, soil-based compost. These are sunk into a bed in the cutting garden. At 6-8in (15-20cm), pinch out stems, removing the top growth down to three or four leaves from base of plant. You’ll create a bushier plant. Lift pots in autumn to replace tomatoes in the greenhouse and to give flowers until Christmas.